How can I make a Facebook RSS application that autoupdates from the provided RSS feeds.
Of course doing this is trivial for canvas applications, but I need this for showing on the Facebook Page. All the RSS apps I've taken a look at either dont update or dont work on Facebook Pages.
Especially now that infinite session keys are deprecated (and maybe even forbidden).
I specifically said I do not need this for canvas applications (as that is trivial to do), but on Facebook Pages!
This is done with profile.setFBML and data published that way does reside on the facebook servers.
Infinite sessions keys do not exist anymore
Every feed is unique. But even if it weren't, can I just stuff the fbml.refreshRefUrl in a cron job and it will work without session (because I can not get an infinite session)=
Or maybe I first need to request the offline_access extended permission?
Is there any way without using cron jobs?
You have two options.
Convert your user session (when the user accesses your app manually) to infinite session, then periodically update the profile information for a user. There is some information on how to do this (and what API calls you can make without sessions) here.
Create a new "handle" (see fb:ref) for each unique feed and update that handle whenever the feed changes. Handles are key-values pairs that are associated with your app, that you can include inline through FBML. This allows you to do a single call to the API that will update all users subscribed to a given feed.
The second option is probably the best in the long run.
Related
I am having trouble figuring this out. Facebook is implementing a new policy https://developers.facebook.com/roadmap/offline-access-removal/ that no longer allows for the simpler "offline_access" tokens that you used to be allowed to get. I am developing an application that needs to access the Graph API every 3 hours with a cronjob, and I am not sure how to set this up so that I dont need to login to access it, since I cant login with a cronjob if I am redirected to a login page. I am assuming I need to use some sort of a Curl call within a php script to get this working. I dont need to post anything, all I am doing is grabbing posts from a few public pages. Any Ideas? I already have a script in place that can do what I want it to, given that I log in first with the login_url. Just need this working with a cronjob.
First of all a reply to the first question - there is nothing to be done on your side. The facebook's change simply means that this kind of applications is no longer possible. The best thing you can do is to request an extended token, which then lasts around 30 (or 60, not sure) days. To request it you need to call the fb api - as shown here and here (albeit not python examples, they are useful pointers). Official FB's explanation is here.
However, this token is going to be invalidated on every occasion the user changes their password, remove the app or log out of facebook. You would need to have a look which requests failed and manually notify the users to renew the token at your side and store the new one.
To your second question about crawling public posts - do you even need an access token? Try using the Graph API without it and see if you can get to the information you are interested in.
I'm building a product that involves clients adding their FB app data into my product's dashboard.
In this case each client would have to go to developers.facebook.com/apps and create an app first.
I would want to have a button which says "Create App" in my website that when clicked, would create the app instantly for the client.
So is it possible to create a FB App from my website (with script, not manually) ??
Thanks in advance,
Altin.
It was possible couple of years ago, and now it's been removed.
First of all, I’d think about the question, “does every client really need their own app?”
Maybe it’d also be possible to have all of the stuff you’re planning to do (no details on that) under one app, and have it decide on what data to show based on the fact which client’s Facebook page it gets added to (if it’ll run as page tab app), or by some additional parameter passed to it when calling it. You could f.e. example automatically redirect to a sub-folder on your webspace based on this criteria, that displays individual pages for that client.
If that’s not an option, then yes, your clients will have to set up the basic app themselves (and therefor they’ll need a verified account) – and afterwards tell app id and secret to you. Many of the “advanced” app settings can then be set by you via script – look at what properties are marked as “(Editable via API)” here: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/api/application/
(Although some of the basic settings, like category, description, logo etc. will still have to be set by your client themselves. But other, more “technical” stuff, that the client maybe doesn’t know about and doesn’t even want to be bothered with, like canvas/page tab URLs etc. can be set by you. I’d say that’s as good a compromise as you can get for such a scenario.)
Total page load times have been ranging from 4-8 seconds, and for some reason the page doesn't even begin to load until it's made the API call. So even though the major API calls are at the bottom of the page (and script), nothing else on the page will load beforehand.
What's the best way to go about this? The most problematic API call is
$result = $facebook->api('/fql?q=select+uid,+name,+is_app_user+from+user+where+uid+in+(select+uid2+from+friend+where+uid1=me())+and+is_app_user=1');
Which finds the list of the user's friends using my app. In addition, I am making multiple api calls to get the names of users who are not that person's friend.
If it is impossible to speed up the API call, how can I at least get the rest of my page to load while FQL runs?
The facebook api is very slow, you may want to make fb api calls through the javascript api and only through php if it is absolutely neccessary. Ajax is your best friend here. Making client side calls only also has the benefit that maybe critical user data never touches the server and that's a good argument for your site. People are very cautious these days.
I am doing some benchmark testing on my web app and notice that the responses from Facebooks API are a lot slower than Twitters.
** For the record, I am using the twitter-async library for Twitter API integration and Facebooks own library here
With the Twitter library I can save an oAuth token & secret, I then use these to create an instance and make calls, simple. For Facebook, unless I ask for offline_permission, I must store an oAuth code and recreate an oAuth access token each time the user logs into my app.
Given the above I can:
Retrieve a Twitter users timeline in 0.02 seconds.
Get a FB oAuth Access Code in 1.16 seconds, then I can get the users details in 2.31 seconds, totalling 3.47 seconds to get the users details.
These statistics are from using functions Facebook has provided in their PHP API library. I also tried implementing my own CURL functions to get this information via a request and the results are not much better.
Is this the same kind of response times others are getting using the Facebook API?
Besides requesting offline permission and storing the permanent access token, how else can I speed up these requests, is the problem on my end or Facebooks?
Thanks,
Chris
I also have the experience the Facebook API is quite slow. I believe the facebook PHP API does not much more than wrap around CURL in the case of API calls so it makes sense that this didn't improve the speeds.
I work on a canvas page, which means for existing users, I get an access token and fb_UID as he/she comes in. At first, I did a /me graph call and sometimes a /me/friends. The first takes like 0.6 secs, the second usually a bit more. So in that case I can (to some extend) confirm your findings.
That's why I've now switched to storing important stuff locally and updating it only when needed (real time update API). Basically, I don't need any API calls during 'normal' operation.
I realize you are probably integrating FB on your own page, and perhaps use a bit more info than just name, fb-UID & friends, and that this solution is not totally answering your question. But perhaps it can still function as a small piece of the puzzle ;)
I am looking forward to other perspectives on this as well!
My application calls multiple URL's from Facebook. It does take some time :/
This is why I decided to write a function which stores the results in $_SESSION so I can use it again later, along with a timestamp to see if the data is too old.
This doesn't solve the actual problem, it just saves you having to keep fetching it.
What I like to do for end user experience, is forward them to page with a loading .gif - then have javascript request the page that actually fetches data. That way, the user remains on a loading page with a nice gif to stare at, until the next page is ready.
So I simply want to add my current facebook status to my personal website. I have been looking at tutorials and other posts about fb and fb connect, but I am still confused.
Is there anyway to do this with simple REST calls? Like twitter or flickr?
From what I understand I dont need FB connect because I am just getting my own status and do not need to get any info from other visitors.
Any know how to do this?
Facebook does have an API, but unfortunately, you cannot use it without acquiring a secret key. Because Facebook gives users control over their data privacy settings, there is no "public access" to data retrieval methods. You must have a key in order to start fetching things.
All facebook applications are given a secret key when they are created. Users can prevent applications from retrieving their data if they want, hence the need for an associated key.
Facebook Connect applications function in the same way... they are assigned a key that is used remotely from a third-party site (ie. yours).
Unfortunately, without one of those keys you won't be able to access any data, even your own. You could probably come up with a work-around by making your own application and using that key to fetch data on yourself, but you'll need to go through some hoops to make it work on a permanent basis (ie. without a new session each time), like granting the offline_access extended permission.